Tag Archive: J.R.R. Tolkien

About 940 people were arrested at the state legislature this summer during the civil disobedience-based grassroots progressive movement called Moral Mondays. T he trials of those charged have begun this month. The first trial, which took place on Oct. 4, occasioned more than just the conviction on all charges, which has been followed since by two dismissals of the same charges last Friday.

Not only did it reveal that the police had spied on the protesters with an undercover cop infiltrating planning meetings — General Assembly Police Chief Jeff Weaver also testified that his department had “collected intelligence” about the “anarchists” among the protesters. According to a story in The News & Observer from Oct. 7, Weaver “testified that his officers had scanned the many ‘Moral Monday’ rallies with eyes trained for ‘anarchists,’” which led to “a murmur of disbelief among the many lawyers.”

On Oct. 10, the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the organization that led Moral Mondays, released a statement in which it addressed the anarchist issue: “Now they are suggesting that they had knowledge of so-called anarchists. This claim strikes us as strange since our staff and team were in constant talks with the capital police, and we were never informed of so-called anarchists. To say things of this nature could be construed as an attempt to mar the image of the protesters and to change the message of the movement.”

Commentators of formal and social media expressed disapproval regarding the police specifically looking to surveil alleged anarchists involved in Moral Mondays, holding that such outrageous concerns from the police were unwarranted or absurd. The outcry, though, should be regarding the NAACP’s response. (more…)